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Mark Hall

On the Mark

Bye bye i

3 comments

TAGS:AS400, IBM, iSeries, mid-range
IT TOPICS:Development, Hardware, Operating Systems, Servers & Data Center, Software

Woe to the ever-shrinking brand. Not just in terms of customer loyalty or profit margins, but in name.

IBM once sold something called System 38, which begat the AS/400, that led to the iSeries, that became System i, which shrunk to i5. Now the company offers you a single, pathetic vowel, the i. The IBM i.

Almost makes you want to weep for IBM's sad, identity-deprived technology.

Once you're done crying for it, shed a tear or two for yourself if you're running i apps. At least that's the view of David Leichner, chief marketing officer of BluePhoenix Solutions Inc. of Cary, N.C.

He says the legacy technology is losing market share. Even supporters are hesitant to stay with i. A survey last month of Common members, the largest user group for i technology, showed a mere 23% planned to move to the latest i hardware.

Leichner says the fastest part of his company's legacy-migration business is moving old RPG-based i stuff to .NET or Java. Not because the RPG apps have stopped working, he admits. But they're just too risky to keep alive.

The risk comes from departing Baby Boomers who are the only ones who understand the poorly documented code and the convoluted business processes, Leichner claims. They're also the sys admins who run the data backups and know how to patch the packaged software that probably was the reason you bought the IBM gear in the first place.

When those workers go, he asks, who will support your app? Is it a risk you're willing to take?

Leichnor acknowledges that legacy migrations are neither fun nor cheap. He says, "No CIO will do it unless they have to."

But he's betting you'll have to. Demographics are on his side. Or not.

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Beg to differ...

Submitted by AS/400 Geek on July 23, 2008 - 4:43 P.M.

I agree with the part about the single, pathetic vowel. I wish IBM would quit messing around with the name.

However, the basic message of your piece is a little misleading and sounds like the same stuff that was being written ten years ago: doom and gloom, the demise of the AS/400, old technology, blah blah blah. It didn't happen then and it's not going to happen now.

Your reference to the COMMON survey is also very misleading. The actual survey said:

"The survey included reactions to the recent IBM Power Systems announcements. Forty-three percent of customers said they plan to upgrade to IBM i 6.1 in 2008, with 23% of respondents planning to upgrade to new POWER6 processor-based systems and 6% planning to implement with IBM BladeCenter."

The survey is talking about those planning to move to the new hardware in 2008 and the number should be 29% because the BladCenter is part of the new hardware. A full 43% plan to upgrade to the latest version of the IBM i operating system. This doesn't sound like a mass migration from the IBM i to me. Just because I’m not moving to the newest hardware in the next year doesn’t mean I’m dissatisfied with it or that I'm moving to some other platform. It means I'm happy with what I have and will move to the new hardware at a later date.

Save your post because you will be able to repost it again ten years from now.

Long live the AS/400, er, I mean the IBM i.

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From IBM-i to i-shell

Submitted by a not-so-old RPG developer on July 4, 2008 - 9:12 A.M.

If we are talking RPG apps, moving to the latest hardware probably does not have a lot of benefits. At the tail end of their carrier, most RPG apps are stable and don't have much to gain from the latest gear that is mainly targeted for Java and other workload. So, it is not surprising to see a low rate of adoption to new hardware.

RPG app will have to give way to modern apps, but it is not going to be a sudden death. As time moves, I think, what used to be the AS/400 system will be reduced to a shell that runs on IBM’s consolidated hardware. By then AS/400’s system administration idiosyncrasies would have been long gone, and I will be on the endangered species list :)

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